Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Back in 2005 I did a nice letterpress print with Alvin Buenaventura. A few of these went out into the world, but for the most part the project was lost to time. With Alvin's passing last year I got in contact with his family to see about the fate of some of his Pigeon Press publications and pick them up for the Spit and a Half distro (Sir Alfred #3 by Tim Hensley, Worst Behaviour by Simon Hanselmann, Facility Integrity by Nick Maandag, etc). At the time it was also confirmed that the family had located a stash of my 2005 prints.

They generously donated these to me, and now I'd like to offer them to King-Cat fans as part of a fundraising drive to help with the publication of the Jenny Zervakis Strange Growths collection this summer.

Jenny Zervakis is one of the great unsung creators of 1990's DIY comics. Her zine Strange Growths was gentle and sincere at a time when most alt-comics were loud and sarcastic. They were poetic and allusive, delving into the heart of the human experience and they were one of my biggest influences as a cartoonist.

In 1997 as the original distro grew, I had plans to begin publishing a series of nice but simple book collections of some of my favorite underground cartoonists, and Jenny was at the top of that short list. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter I fell seriously ill and spent the next 10 or 12 years focusing on my health issues, and this publishing venture had to be delayed. For twenty years!

The Complete Strange Growths 1990-1997 will be approximately 224 pages, and collect the entirety of Strange Growths 1-13, plus bonus comics and a new interview with Jenny conducted by Robert Clough. The book will debut at CAKE in Chicago this June.

In the meantime we're beginning to raise funds for publication. If you buy one of these Buenaventura prints, proceeds will go directly to the Strange Growths fund. A bit further down the line I'll be offering a preorder book sale, which will include some premiums from Jenny (color prints, drawings etc).

Supplies of the print are very limited, so please email me at johnp_kingcat AT hotmail DOT com before sending money. Thank you!

John P.

AFFIRM letterpress print by John Porcellino and Buenaventura Press, 2005

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Word has come that the great children's book artist and writer Dahlov Ipcar has passed away, seven months short of her 100th birthday.

She was one of my favorite artists as a child. The cover of the
forthcoming King-Cat #77 was drawn in tribute to her, and in working on it I
pulled out some of the old Scholastic Books editions of her work that I’ve
owned since I was a kid… I was surprised and delighted to see how big of an
almost unconscious influence she’d had on my own work. I had no idea she was
still alive while I was drawing it.

Tucker Stone of No Brow Books has shared the following remembrance (via Facebook and The Comics Journal), and posted a short video made a few years back in her studio. A treasure.

"A few years ago, pretty soon after I started at Nobrow, my
friend Jason and I drove to Georgetown
Maine and interviewed Dahlov
Ipcar, who was 96 at the time, about her children’s books that we were getting
ready to re-issue via Flying Eye. She was electric: 96 years old, living alone
(it was her elderly son’s job to supply her with groceries), very direct, funny
and acerbic as hell. I loved her. I wrote her letters afterwards (that was her
preferred method of contact with me) whenever I had something of note to tell
her about my work on her books, and I spoke to her a few times on the phone to
set up some interviews and assist her with supplying books for events she would
do at a local children’s hospital. She was always on top of it, and funny in a
crusty, tough way that belied decades of commitment to craft and hardcore
farmhouse living.

She just passed away, which was expected. I am sorry to her
family for that, but I know how incredibly proud her sons were to work with
her, and how much she loved and missed her husband, who passed away himself
decades ago. Her life was lived as fully as one could dream of –a family she
loved, and an art she devoted herself too. One of the first things that she
told Jason and I when we arrived to make the attached video was that she had no
interest in living to be 100 years old–as she put it, she was tired of spending
so much of her morning going to the bathroom–and that was only the first of
many things that made us laugh.

I just checked. Her 100th birthday would have been this
November. Nice work, Dahlov."